The Knockout

The Knockout (1914)

*** (out of 4)

Nice short from Keystone has Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle having to defend his girlfriend but he soon gets double crossed into entering the boxing ring with a professional champion. THE KNOCKOUT really isn't a good movie as there are so many things wrong with it but at the same time you have to give the film credit for its final five-minutes as well as the importance that Charles Chaplin brought to it. It seems like the first fifteen-minutes were fairly uneventful except for a rather funny fight that Arbuckle gets into defending his woman. From this point on we see a bunch of nothing and for the most part there's really nothing interesting happening up to the fight. Once the fight happens is when the film really picks up and a lot of the credit has to go to Chaplin who plays the referee who doesn't seem to know what he's doing. It's funny to watch this thing because you can see the old-fashioned Keystone ways pretty much going out the window in favor to the type of comedy that Chaplin would be doing from this point on. This here is also worth watching for the performance of Arbuckle who is extremely fast on his feet for such a big man and he really gets to show his comic grace.